Ed Cumming:

Let us begin with Mr Maltby’s letter in response to my piece (An Unsurprising Elite, 28th September). As you were no doubt aware, the article was flavoured to provoke a response. Whilst I felt that some of his turd-slinging was perhaps a little petty, not to mention the repeated misspelling of my name (plain bad manners), there were several moments at which I feel compelled to lay aside these more superficial concerns for basic ones.

For all that my piece was “intellectually lazy”, his knee-jerk reaction along class lines appears to have clouded some of his own logic. He writes: “The mere fact of going to a very expensive school does not in itself confer merit. With sufficient help and coaching, even a mediocre student can achieve five As at A-level and summon sufficient brio to blag their way through interview.” But surely if the Sutton Trust report showed us anything it was that, by all of the measures Oxbridge in their wisdom can come up with, going to a very expensive school can confer merit.

He implies he would prefer to see an education system which va lued a vague, abstracted notion of “intelligence”, rather than the barometers of rational ability, factual recall, application and academic interest which are currently in place. The idea of “abolishing” private education entirely in the UK is simply preposterous, Jurassic-era socialism, and unfortunately slightly undermines other things he says. It is all well and good banging on about the “right” to a good education, but since uniformity would be an impossibility (not to mention undesirable), surely he must agree that the wealthy are always going to find ways to use their money to help their children?

Any alternative to private education would see a leap in extra-curricular private tuition, fostering even more aggressive and unhelpful social divisions within the classroom, and an increase in the already-burgeoning practice of buying a house to fall in the catchment area of a good school, which endss up costing the tax-payer rather than the families involved.

To abolish private educati on would be to accept an overall fall in the academic standards to the nation. Surely he must agree that our system, particularly at the Oxbridge end of things, should remain aspirational rather than conciliatory? I agree, of course, that we must foster the brightest and the best regardless of their background, but destroying our existing centres of excellence is not the way to achieve this. Abolishing private education in the UK, or whatever system Mr Maltby proposes instead (something which is unclear in his letter), would be as ridiculous as abolishing money, or the right of parents to choose the best for their offspring.

Ed Maltby:

It appears that I am unmasked! I should begin by congratulating Cummings on successfully identifying me as a socialist. Alas, it seems that much of my argument remains lost on him.

This is a tool of class domination, ensuring that control of the country rests in the hands of a relatively small, moneyed elite

As I made explicit in my original letter, p rivate education is not objectionable because it is good but because it is a means of buying privilege. The abolition of private education ought not be confused with the abolition of good education. It is a large infrastructure dedicated to the overrepresentation of rich kids in top jobs and top universities (and massively subsidised by the taxpayer through “charitable status” and scandalous ly low income tax on the rich).

If your parents are rich enough to pay for you to go to private school, you have a better than fair chance of going to Oxbridge or having a top job. This is not meritocratic – this is a tool of class domination, ensuring that control of the country rests in the hands of a r elatively small, moneyed elite, denying the clever poor a chance to advance themselves. It really is as simple as that.

I am very much in favour of good education – that is, the good education which well-funded institutions can provide to children. Indeed, I would go so far as to consider it a “right” which everyone should receive, and not just a rich minority.
This is the point of socialism: not the abolition of the all the advances and apparatus of current society, but their transformation – from tools of a system which perpetuates the domination of one class by another, into tools of a system geared towards the satisfaction of authentic human needs and desires.

Thus, to suggest as Cummings does that the abolition of this institution by which the rich can pay for preferential treatment would be to “accept an overall fall in the academic standards of the nation” is powerfully obtuse. Eliminating the unfair advantage of a rich minority is not about undermining the standard of education – but fundament ally changing the way access to top-rate education is administered.

On the Sutton Trust: Sir Peter Lampl prefaces the August 2004 report by pointing out that universities do discriminate against state-school pupils, and furthermore that this is “certainly a potential waste of talent”. His point here is the same as mine – that the gross overrepresentation of private school pupils at Oxbridge is inimical to the project of providing an HE sector which can “fairly reflect the ability of the whole population, not just the small minority whose parents can afford to send their children to independent schools”. And no, Cummings, Oxbridge selection procedures cannot be accurate “barometers” of intelligence if they allow for such a massive overrepresentation of a tiny, moneyed minority.

The demand for a radically better staffed and funded system of comprehensive education must be indivisible from the demand for the abolition of private education. You fund one the same way you get rid of the other: cut the £100m a year tax breaks to private schools, and raise income tax and corporation tax to sensible levels. Without these massive subsidies from the taxpayer, watch Eton collapse. And when state education is properly funded and the Great Unwashed are being educated to the same standard as the children of the rich for free, watch demand for private education and private tuition dwindle. The fact is that these proposals are very modest. What is truly “preposterous” is that, given its eminent feasibility, such a system does not exist already. And the persistence of good education as the privileged preserve of the rich is more barbarous still.

Ed Cumming:

I opened Mr Maltby’s most recent letter enthusiastically, only to be disappointed once again that he appears not to have correctly noted my surname. It is an odd rhetorical technique, certainly, but desperate times call for all sorts of measures, especially when you ar e setting an archaic, cancerous political dogma against both all human experience and mathematical fact. We might as well get rid of gravity. For Mr Maltby appears to be of opinion that, were private schools to be abolished, there would be enough resources in the UK to raise every school to the level of our current best. Pointing out the corpulent, gushing fallacy of this feels a bit patronising, but here we go:

Whatever system Mr Maltby proposes instead would be as ridiculous as abolishing money

We cannot but presume that these schools would have to have the same spending per student – these ruthless capitalists have nothing if not an eye for value. And with no competition, waste would skyrocket.

Let us take Westminster. A suitable model of the sort of school my erstwhile opponent would like to close down, not least, no doubt, because I went ther e. Fees for day boys (the majority of students) are £16,842 a year. Government spending in the UK is, on average, slightly more than £8,000 a year. Enough?

I’ll go on. There are currently roughly 700 students – a turnover of £11,872,000 even before we have accounted for the spending from endowments and properties owned by the school. There are 6,086 secondary schools in the UK. For the purposes of this piece we’ll imagine they all have about 120 students a year everywhere – it’s a good number to work with, it seems to foster a lot of success.

This makes £72bn, purely for the secondary system, when current government spending across the entire education system, including primary, secondary, university and mature education is currently £74bn. Mr Maltby’s £100m from the abolished tax-breaks might, just, cover the bar-tab after the ministers meet to discuss doubling (at the very least) education spending.

The abolition of private education ought not be confused with the abolition of good education

Raise income tax? OK. Total income tax revenue currently stands at about £135bn annually. Saying we need double the current funding (again, a low estimate) we need about another £74bn to cover everything. Don’t know where that’s going to come from. Actually, looking at the figures there’s a nice £90bn expenditure we could simply transfer to education. The surplus might even cover the shortfall from government inefficiency. The only problem is that I would imagin e Mr Maltby would have some issues with abolishing the NHS.

But it’s rather crass to speak only about money. From the physical financial impossibility (“eminent feasibility”) of his scheme we must move to another one of those irritatingly finite resources – labour. Our dream school, based on the above model, employs about fifty excellent teachers, who are attracted by the opportunity to tea ch in an environment for learning, on some of the best pay in their profession. They are superb conveyors of information, with an infectious enthusiasm for learning and a deep care for the general wellbeing of their students. They are able to bring out the best in all students, keeping discipline amongst the unruly whilst simultaneously bringing out everyone’s academic potential.

There are not 250,000 of these people in Britain. And even if there were, Mr Maltby’s system would have to have the best of them evenly distributed around the country. It would be a bit like spreading the Arsenal and Man Utd players evenly around the Premiership. The domestic league might be more competitive, but I’d back Barcelona in the Champions League.

And unfortunately, Britain plays in the world. It can be rather a cruel, unforgiving place, where nothing is in infinite supply. Some have more of this limited supply than others. This argument is necessarily an economic one. Mr Maltby would do well to acknowl edge this before proposing an impossible educational solution.

Ed Maltby:

Cummings’ reply above is priceless. For everything else, there’s basic economics.

So, according to his slightly dodgy reckoning, in order to give every child in Britain a Westminster-standard education, we would need to double the education budget. But where could we come by £72bn? Cummings thinks it impossible. Sigh. According to HM Revenue and Customs figures, tax evasion alone costs the treasury at least £75bn a year. Avoidance (legal non-payment of tax) costs at the very least £10bn. At the risk of sounding patronising, Cummings, that’s your target easily met, even before we’ve touched income tax. Of course, chasing down super-rich criminals and closing a few loopholes in tax law in order to provide decent education and social mobility to working class children m ight seem like an extravagance to some, but I maintain that it is a modest proposal.

Given that corporate and top-rate income tax are now at just about their lowest levels in living memory, there is an incredible amount of untapped wealth available to pour into education if only we broke the political stranglehold of the wealthy elite over the economic life of this country. For as long as working-class organisations are weak and bound by anti-unions laws and parliament is dominated by parties in thrall to the rich, this won’t happen. But economically it is eminently possible, and morally it is imperative.

Furthermore, the market does not ensure efficiency. The market ensures a pell-mell dash to make profit. The two are not synonymous, especially not in education. The BBC reports that for seven years in a row, private school fees have risen by significantly more than double the rate of inflation. In efficient industries, this really tends not to happen. What’s going on? Nothing unusual, they’re just priv ate businesses following a financial imperative to make more money. They’ve discovered that they can charge parents more for the same service. And so radically improving state education in the UK would be cheaper than he has suggested.

As for teachers, in a country of 60 million people, a few hundred thousand bright, charismatic graduates should be very easy to find, especially if we were to raise teaching salaries considerably and improve teacher training provision. After all, we’ve seen that there’s enough money to go around.

As for that £100m “charity” sum, what we spend it on is beside the point. What is crucial is that we should no longer use it to subsidise an infrastructure which stuffs our top jobs and universities with rich dullards; an archaic, undemocratic institution which is a slap in the face to the many thousands of ordinary working-class children whose potential brilliance is going to waste in neglected state schools, sink estates and insecure, underpaid dead-end jobs.

Ed Cumming is a second year English student at Clare College. He was educated at Westminster School, a co-educational public school which charges £16,842 per annum and achieves an Oxbridge success rate of 49.9%.
Ed Maltby is a third year MML student at St John's. He was educated at High Storrs, a co-educational comprehensive school, which sends 0.9% of its pupils to Oxbridge.